[A Forest Tale] greg27 – secluded river red gums

[greg27]

Here's my entry for this one - five eucalyptus camaldulensis tubestock. I went up to the State Flora Nursery in Belair yesterday to grab these but they were out of stock, with none coming in for another month. I'm not quite patient enough for that. Fortunately I have an ABN for freelance work and was able to find a wholesale nursery that was happy to do a small order. Each tube was $2, bargain. Not sure if I can write that off on my tax return though.

I hadn't thought about doing a group planting before so I started off with thinking of my story first, which got me thinking about a Hans Heysen painting (unfortunately not an original) that my parents had hanging up when I was younger. I think they also had those Hans Heysen coasters and food mat things that every old person seems to have stashed in a drawer somewhere. I think this was the print: https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/colle ... orks/4804/

I always found this painting really peaceful and could picture myself off in the bush alone, no troubles or anything to worry about. So I'd like to try and capture that feeling in my group planting. Or try to attempt to.

I'm away for a week from tomorrow so I'll leave these as they are for now, but hope to plant them together fairly soon as I really like the idea of them growing together as soon as possible - I'll put in some interesting movement, but hopefully the trees do this themselves around each other to some extent.

Thanks Mark, you got me all keen for this one, prize or no prize!

[MJL]

Wonderful to have your (and this competition’s) first entry Greg. Nice and early too. Welcome on board.

Love your choice - by coincidence I used River Red Gums in the [Natural] competition. Here’s a link to the progress on that group. They are great fun and grow like the clappers. https://www.ausbonsai.com.au/forum/vie ... 36&t=26545

Thanks for entering. Good luck and remember you can have multiple entries, if you desire.

Cheers,

Mark


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[greg27]

Thanks Mark, I think I had read through your natural competition thread before but completely forgot about it! I've already got the tubestock in a tray of water, with automatic watering set up for when I'm away, and I'll be sure to continue this after they've been potted up together.

[greg27]

Yesterday I gave these guys a root prune, planted them together in a cat litter tray with some holes drilled for drainage, and roughly wired them. It looks like a bit of a tangled mess but I'm aiming for a more natural look, so hopefully it all comes together once they put on a bit of growth. I'm imagining that the front right corner is a river/billabong that the trees are sort of growing over.

I'm a bit worried that I took too much off the roots as these were looking pretty droopy this morning; I've moved them into the shade to recover so fingers crossed I haven't killed them straight away.

I collected some red gum seed pods from a local billabong that my daughter and I like to visit ("bibong see duckies!") and planted some seeds about a week ago which have already started to sprout. I'm not sure if I'll use these in this group but they're there in case I want to add any younger plants to the mix.

[MJL]

Gotta love the re-purposing of a cat litter tray! Hopefully the seedlings recover for you Greg. In my experience, they will either recover quickly or fail fast - you won't be left wondering. I am not sure whether you and Matt S are geographically close and perhaps inhabit the same S.A. Bonsai Club but Matt knows plenty about River Gums and will be a source of advice for sure. Here's a link to one of Matt's recent posts. https://www.ausbonsai.com.au/forum/view ... 04&t=27924

[greg27]

Cheers Mark. Hopefully my cats don't confuse the litter tray planter for an actual litter tray

As of this morning the trees look much happier - the tops of a few died back but then the rest perked up, so hopefully I haven't set them back too much and they'll bush up nicely.

I'm not a member of the SA Bonsai Society (one day, when life becomes less hectic) but I did meet up with Matt when he very kindly gave me a ficus thonningii cutting (which I've just wired up and need to post a thread about soon), so I might need to hit him up one way or another for advice!

[greg27]

All of these guys survived my ham-fisted root prune. The wire was just starting to cut in on one of the trees so I've removed it from all of them - they're all roughly holding their shape but I'm happy for them to do their own thing anyway. I'll leave these guys alone to grow for a while now.

[MJL]

Good stuff Greg - just them go coco bananas for a while ... sun, heaps of water and they’ll thicken up quicker than you can imagine ...


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[greg27]

Throwing a few more into the mix - a lone surviving seedling from seeds I collected and sowed back in early January, and some self-sowed that I had the opportunity to collect a few weeks back (ignore the unrelated allocasuarina - I was running out of potting mix so they all went in together). It's a bit hard to tell from the photos but these have all back-budded and so hopefully will survive and thrive. I'm 90% sure these are all river red gums but if not I don't think there's any harm in different species of eucalyptus growing in the same forest.

I'll wait until my kitty litter tray trees have grown up a bit more before deciding exactly how many of these extras I'll use, but it'll be good to get some age difference between the trees.

[MJL]

collected tee-orphans will find a welcome home in your secluded forest Greg.


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[greg27]

So these guys are going suitably nuts - unfortunately I have only a limited space for pre-bonsai, and these were starting to block precious sunlight, so I started to consider a chop. I spent about half an hour this morning researching the best time to trim eucalypts in my climate and then decided to ignore everything I'd read and go for the tried and true "yea nah she'll be right mate" approach and just cut 'em back now. They're healthy, they're red gums, I'm sure it'll be okay.

I'm still yet to add in any of my rescued tree-orphans but these are also growing well and I'll make space for them in the kitty litter tray at some point soon.

Terrible after-photo - it looks like there are four, but there's another hidden behind the tree at the front left. That may call for a slight shift in placement.

[greg27]

Last night I added two collected orphans and one seed-grown plant into my kitty litter tray. Of course that leaves me with an even number of trees - I did have another set aside, but after taking it out if its current pot I decided it had interest enough to stand on its own. Off to track down another seedling...

Really hard to see in my terrible photo but it's nice to get some different aged trees in the mix, hopefully making the end result a bit more natural looking.

[greg27]

First time I've checked on these properly in a little while. I managed to collect another seedling a little while ago that has just started growing new leaves - that's the one at the front right with the sad-looking leaves. I removed some wire that was cutting in slightly, shortened some branches that were going a bit too nuts, relocated a couple of caterpillars and squished some aphids.

[greg27]

This has been growing nicely through winter which is great. My back yard is fairly shaded in winter but I have a flat roof at the back of my house which gets good sun, so in true crazy bonsai person-style I put this and a few other things up on the roof to chase the light. One of the trees went through an unintentional defoliation thanks to a stowaway caterpillar but has since grown new leaves all over it.

There's also a ninth tree in the mix that I forgot to post about when I added it in a few months back. This was collected from a billabong near me where the council is doing restorative works; ironically the trucks plow through the trees and run over self-sown seedlings, so I rescue any that I see growing too close to the dirt road.

I found (what I think is) a cool-looking slab a little while ago which I might use as a base for this forest. I've never done a slab planting before so who knows how it'll turn out.

[KIRKY]

If you use the slab just remember red gums love their water. You may need to sit the slab in a tray of water or rick losing your trees.
Cheers
Kirky